The Science of Entrainment

Here we will be talking about what the Science of Entrainment is based on, in much greater detail.

In the previous page about Entrainmentwe looked at how the idea of Entrainment developed, and how we are able to use it to make our meditations much deeper and more powerful.

Now we will look at the different methods and the science that have been developed to make this practical.

Stimulation that causes Entrainment can be of different kinds - we can use flashing lights, sound pulses, clicks, very mild skin electrical shocks, or rapid and regular tapping on the skin

- and all will tend to produce the same effect as long as they are at the number of 'beats per second' that we want the brain to entrain to.

So the connection to meditation - specifically to a Guided Meditation - is obvious

......if someone is being led into a Guided Meditation using a pre-recorded voice - then the meditation will be much deeper if there is an entrainment stimulus going on at the same time, at the same rate as the brainwaves shown in deep meditation states.

That is why I am using the science of this Entrainment Technology in all of my own Pre-Recorded Guided Meditations that I am offering, in order to make those meditations automatically and effortlessly as powerful as if you had been meditating for years !

What kind of stimulus is best for the science of Entrainment ?

- we mentioned flashing lights, sound pulses, clicks, very mild skin electrical shocks, and regular tapping on the skin

- which is best ?

We will have a quick look at the science of each in turn;-

Very mild skin electrical shocks are obviously not the best way - nobody likes getting shocked at the best of times !

Even by mild shocks !

Rapid regular tapping on the skin is obviously going to be very hard to do in the home situation - and besides which, most people find it very irritating after a while.

Similarly with clicks - they also quickly become irritating !

Flashing lights work very well, and it is possible to buy special spectacles with inbuilt lights that can be set to flash at a certain frequency - or pulses per second - however, they have two disadvantages -

.............the first is that some people find them irritating or disorienting,

............. and the second is that people who have Epilepsy or any kind of seizure disorder will sometimes go into a seizure from the flashing lights.

So that leaves us with the science of sound pulses - which can be designed so that they are not irritating or obtrusive, and yet can be still very effective.

There are different ways that we can use sound - let's look at these -

Ways that sound can be used for Entrainment Science.

Thus there are Monaural Beats, Isochronic beats, and Binaural beats - they all have slight differences - let's look at each individually to get a complete picture.

The Science of Monaural beats

They are smooth sine wave type beats - that is to say they have a curved form like in the picture below;-

If we listen to monaural sounds as beats at the rate of 10 per second for example, (the same as Alpha brainwaves) - after 5 or 6 minutes our brains will become entrained to this - and we will tend to be in a meditative state.

However if you listen to monaural beats by themselves, especially if they are on the loud side - many people tend to find them irritating, which of course defeats the whole object of the exercise !

On the other hand, if the beats are very soft or quiet, they may be not loud enough to trigger responses from the brain in the desired rate of brainwaves.

The brain needs a certain minimal sound input in order to have any chance of responding as we want - called an Event Related Potential.

If the volume of sound is below that volume - then nothing will happen.

So how do we solve this problem ?

Scientists have come up with scientific clever ways of getting around this -

...... one is to "embed" the sound beats within music - which makes them less obvious to the conscious mind,

......another is to make the sound beats at such a low frequency that they are only just in our 'sound spectrum' - and it has been found that the lower frequencies are less irritating to us. ......another obvious one is to make the sound beats so low a volume that they are only just audible.

......and finally - and probably the best answer - is to actually link the background music to the beats - so that the beats themselves are actually either a part of the music, - or else the music has slight volume of sound changes at the same frequency that we want - and usually the conscious mind is not even aware of these minute variations, but they can still have the required effect.

This is what that can look like - ("filtered" music at an entrainment frequency) -

This science of entrainment method is being used extensively with good results

The Science of Isochronic beats.

- so are becoming the way that a few experts are using in entrainment.

However they tend to be a bit harsh to listen to - children don’t mind them so much - as they tend to sound like some computer games' noises - but adults usually dislike them intensely !

The Science of Binaural beats.

Binaural beats are interesting - they were first discovered by a scientist called Heinrich Wilhelm Dove in about 1839.

What he discovered was, that if two sounds that had similar but different frequencies were played together -

- then they produce a third sound that was actually in the same frequency as the difference between the first two.

I know that this may sound like gibberish to you - so I will explain further !

All sound is in the form of a wave, and the frequency - or number of waves/ (beats) per second, and the height or pitch of each wave determines whether it is a high pitched or a low pitched sound, and also how loud it is

(this is measured in Hertz - usually abbreviated as Hz, but means basically the same as 'beats per second').

The human range of hearing is between 20 and 20,000Hz (20Hz is about the frequency of the lowest of the low notes played by an organ - you almost feel it rather than hear it !

...On the other hand 20,000Hz is more like the very high pitched squeak of a bat - that many people cannot hear because it is so high pitched).

Human speech is in the range between about 500Hz and 10,000Hz. But here we are talking about the pitch of the beats.

Anyway, what Mr. Dove found was that if you play two sounds that are fairly close together (for example 500Hz and 520Hz), then a third sound is formed at 20Hz (the difference between 500 and 520).

Sometimes if you have two genuine Tibetan bells, and they have slightly different frequencies - and if they are rung together you can hear a very powerful third beat frequency that seems to be coming from 'inside your head' - this is a binaural beat !

Another more modern scientist called Gerald Oster took this a step further, and his results were published in the Scientific American magazine in 1973.

He found that if, for example, you played a tone of 500Hz into the Right ear, - and at the same time played a tone of 510Hz into the Left ear - then the brain also "heard" an internal beat of 10Hz (beats per second - the difference between the two)

- and this is in the same range as Alpha brainwaves that signal meditation type emotions.

So this can be used as the science basis for another kind of Entrainment, using Binaural beats - although it tends usually to be not as powerful as Monaural or Isochronic beats - as the 'sound waves' themselves are more gentle - as in the example below -

Therefore their effect on Entraining the brain tends to be less effective - although they certainly do work as a means of entrainment.

However, Monaural beats are both more efficient, and can be the easiest to listen to - so are the teype of Entrainment most commonly used

....also with the added advantage that they do not usually require headphones, except in special circumstances.

Like in my "Fantasy Meditation MP3 Downloads"

To summarize all of the above, we can say therefore that the science of Entrainment is;-

- and that because it acts as an addition to the meditation itself in producing a deeply relaxed state,

- then it is a technique that can make the meditation much more powerful and effective.

In the Pre-Recorded Meditation CD and MP3 downloads that I am offering, I am using one kind of Entrainment or another - in order to make them very much more efficient and effortless for you.

Click HERE to see that page

Thus I am using Monaural beats – both embedded in music and also in background tone and sounds – and Binaural beats for some.

An interesting company has provided me with the software to make that possible, it is very easy to use, and if you would like more information about it then just click on the link below, to get all their information - which is very extensive - and also very comprehensive - very neat stuff !!

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